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Cream Cheese in Straw Vats

A method for making cream cheese using cream, milk, sugar, rennet, and warm water, then aging in straw vats.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cream Cheese in Straw Vats

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curd

  1. Combine cream, new milk, sugar, and rennet in a bowl.

  2. Add warm water until the mixture is as warm as new milk.

  3. Let the curd form without breaking it.

  4. Transfer the curd to a straw vat without cloth.

  5. As whey runs off, add more warm water without pressing the curd.

  6. After 12 hours, turn the curd onto a new bottom.

  7. Let it stand for 2 days until solid.

Salt and ripen

  1. Sprinkle coarse sea salt on both sides.

  2. Turn the curd twice daily.

  3. Wipe the curd each time.

  4. Once it can stand on its edge, set it upright in a dry room near a window for air circulation.

  5. It will be ready to eat in 10 days.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cream
Adds fat, which gives the cheese a rich, soft, creamy texture.
New milk
Supplies the proteins that set into the curd, forming the body of the cheese.
Rennet
Enzyme that coagulates the milk proteins so they set into a solid curd.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the cheese and draws out moisture from the surface as it firms.

The step that matters

Let the curd form without breaking it. Rennet needs time to set the milk into a fragile gel. Cutting or disturbing it early lets whey escape unevenly, leaving a crumbly, drier cheese with a weaker structure.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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